


I have loved the stars too fondly

by asuralucier



Series: La Notte [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Character Study, Dancing, Hand Jobs, Insomnia, Intimacy, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Wordplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Some nights, we’re nearly bosom buddies; other nights, like tonight, with scores and scores of interlopers standing in between us, that the truth has been an uninvited beacon, lit up like the most intrusive thought in my head.Part two of a series that revolves around Oliver’s anxiety and his insomnia. Elio’s here for it though, he really is. (Part one can be foundhere, though this can be read as a standalone work.)
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Series: La Notte [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626580
Comments: 10
Kudos: 100





	I have loved the stars too fondly

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sarah Williams. The full quote is “I have loved the stars too fondly, to be fearful of the night.” As it is, it also works as a pun! Because _muvi star_ , get it? I’m going to hide in my corner now. 
> 
> Brought to you by an hour of me staring at [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cRyd74roZ4). 
> 
> Also, according to this [article](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-science-of-jerking-yourself-to-sleep-and-back-awake-again), highly aroused sexual states resemble mindfulness meditation? I couldn’t not.

I watch Oliver dance. I probably look like some kind of lovesick loon. I’ll cop to being one of those things, sure, but not the other. 

The club’s speakers are on its last legs, but tonight, no one cares. Not that anyone usually cares, but I tend to notice these things; more now, since I’m trying not to notice him, but that’s not anything, is it? Everybody’s too busy getting drunk on the languid Northern Italian heat, where it’s kinder, breezier if you will, not like the stifling swathe of summer wind that plagues cities like Rome or Milan. It’s why we always holiday in the north, here in B. 

Anyway, I digress. I am still watching Oliver dance, in his blue polo and khaki shorts. He looks as if he is the only one on the dance floor, the undisputed epicenter of this tiny world. It’s the sort of dance that drips of American _muvi star_ narcissism. You want to hate it, because you see it exactly for what it _wants_ to be, but it draws you in, despite your (my) best efforts not to get sucked into a strange Oliver-vortex. 

It’s complicated. I have never found desire complicated before. People either want something (someone) or they don’t. I’ve always thought it was one or the other because. The books I read always say otherwise, but they have to, don’t they? Otherwise, writers will have nothing to waffle on and on about. 

_Swallow all your tears my love  
And put on your new face  
You can never win or lose  
If you don't run the race_

I almost fear that I’ll lose Oliver to a girl. To some more svelte, feminine-curved, sweat-matted, over-perfumed body. 

But I can’t lose him anyway, he’s not mine to lose or keep. Still, I watch Oliver and a blonde exchange intimate pleasantries; her fingers threaded through his belt loop, near his hip, and his palm ostentatiously flat against her ass in her back pocket. 

“I’ve got an early start tomorrow,” Oliver says, contrite, “wish I could. Really, I got to go. But maybe I’ll see you later? Around?” 

“ _Dai_.” The girl doesn’t let go of him. “It’s the summer. No one has early starts around here.” 

“I’m not exactly from around here.” Oliver shrugs, balancing on his shoulder blades, something of congeniality and cruelty. “Maybe you noticed.” 

I step in. I know the girl. Not well, but enough to say hi. I’m from around here, sort of. I touch Oliver’s elbow, on the inside, resisting the urge to pinch his sinewed muscle. To wake him up. To make him look at me instead. 

“Make up your mind,” I say, “or else I’m leaving without you.” 

Oliver fixes me with a look that belongs in a novel. All at once everything, and then nothing at all. Then he takes his hand out of her back pocket. “All right. All right, I’m coming.” 

Things are strange between us, if I were to give it words, imbue it with substance, I might have called it a Roman wind, making aliens of us both. We ride our bikes at a leisurely pace, and when I glance back at him, Oliver is in danger of falling over, even if he’s still upright now. I think. 

“Do you?” 

“Do I what?” he asks, looking at me. For somebody who is just about drunk, his eyes are still blue and clear. 

“Wish you could,” I say, before I can think better of it. I really ought to, but it’s too late. The words, as Oliver had spoken them scarce minutes before, are foreign on my own tongue. Now, I sound drunk, too. “You totally could have, for the record. I mean.” 

“What game are we playing now, Elio?” Oliver says, and where the air was strange before, it’s now more than strange. We have - or I have - entered hostile territory. Strange to strangle to strangers. Some nights, we’re nearly bosom buddies; other nights, like tonight, with scores and scores of interlopers standing in between us, that the truth has been an uninvited beacon, lit up like the most intrusive thought in my head. 

I bite my lip, hard enough to hurt. “ ‘M not playing a game. Just asking a question.” 

When we get back to the villa, Mom or Dad has left the porch light on for us, but the house is otherwise still. So still, you can feel the wood breathing. 

I touch Oliver again, this time, casually, near his spine, not at all wanting, and he touches me back, long fingers brushing at the back of my hand. I wonder if he’s thinking about it. 

“I’ll go first,” I say, “if you follow me and step where I step, then we won’t wake anyone up. But you’ll have to be careful. Pay close attention.” 

“That’s a good idea.” Oliver almost smiles at me in the dark. “I wouldn’t have thought of it.” As we ascend up the stairs, the closeness of him thrums beneath my feet. 

After he steps into my bedroom - his bedroom - after me, Oliver closes the door very softly behind him. I have to really listen, to find the sound of the latching mechanism clicking into place. 

“Well, good night,” I say. “ _Buona notte_.” 

“G’night,” Oliver echos. “You have a good time?” 

He sniffs himself experimentally under both armpits, like an unabashedly primordial creature. I feel in myself a strange, strong urge to stick my nose under there too. I wonder if it’d make me feel safe. Then Oliver says, “Whew, I smell.” 

“We all do,” I say, as a point of fact. It’s less that I want to assure him, of course I don’t. Oliver would probably think me strange for that, even if night is a time for strangeness. For the things that the daylight can’t stomach. “Except for that chick you were with. Bianca. I’m sure she smells like Chanel on overdrive.” Except too, I think, that he wouldn’t dare to sniff himself in his pits if I had tits (I’ve just rhymed. I don’t mean to.) But at the same time, maybe that means I’ve already come out ahead. He can bear to show himself to me; or maybe, one dares to hope, he can’t help but reveal himself to me. He does so naturally, without thinking. 

Oliver makes a face, flops down on the bed face-down. “Will you quit it already.” It’s not phrased like a question. 

“All right,” I say, “I quit. Yes, I guess I had a nice time.” 

I go over and stand next to him. Oliver has been here for nearly half the summer now, but sometimes when I look at him on my bed, I’m struck with another strangeness. We don’t much go for Freud in this house, he’s too simple, too indulgent in his own curiosities to get anywhere worth while. If you want to see my parents scrunch up their noses, just say, “psychoanalysis.” But three weeks from now, the familiarity of my own bed shall oppress me anew with Oliver’s absence. 

There are light summer blankets bunched up a little ways from where he is, and I gather them up. 

“What are you doing?” He looks at me from under his elbow. 

“Thinking, I guess,” I say. I retreat to the chair. Or at least, I start to, but he reaches for me. Stops me right in my tracks. 

“Sit if you want, I’ll make room.” 

Oliver does, curling himself up, almost in the fetal position. He looks absurd, but there’s room for me, now. I fold myself onto the mattress and put my hands over my knees. “That’s generous of you.” 

“Hey, _mi casa es su casa_ , right?” 

He’s smiling again, and yet this time, I can take my time drinking it in. I wonder what else it’s meant to be, this smile. “Is that supposed to be funny?” 

“Maybe,” Oliver says. “Do you think it’s funny?” 

“Maybe in a sad way,” I concede. “That okay?” 

Oliver sighs noisily and moves to stretch his long arms over his head. He accidentally brushes by my shoulder and we both notice. “Of course it is. - I’m not going to conk out, am I?” 

“Maybe not,” I say. I lean back to make myself comfortable and he doesn’t stop me. Doesn’t move. There’s even less room between us now, and no room to lie. “Say, did you play tennis?” 

“Varsity,” Oliver says, mouth twisting. “I was pretty good too, then I hurt myself. Why?”

“I was watching you dance,” I tell him. “I admire your footwork.” 

“Ri-ight.” 

Suddenly, Oliver’s face is next to mine, and there’s neither room nor air but I don’t want there to be anything between us. He leans into kiss me and while I’d been expecting it in my head, the rest of me isn’t quite prepared. But I kiss him back anyway, pouring all I could of my youth into him. His fingers curl themselves into my hair. 

That kiss opens up the floodgates for us. Oliver and I have led, within the last few weeks with its long days, a quiet, careful, shy, if honest existence. His mouth on mine, and then my jaw, my neck, soaking up the smell of me, makes the honesty into something else. 

Then the bed gives a protesting creak and we both freeze up. 

Oliver expels a soft, “Fuck.” 

I say, “If you want. I’ve never done it before, but I.” 

“Jesus,” Oliver says, he reddens. Maybe he’s thinking about my ass. I hope to God he is. He might look embarrassed at the thought, but at least he doesn’t pull away from me. He can’t. He can’t help but be honest with me. “Maybe something else. Something that you’ve done before. Because I -” 

“I jerk off,” I say, almost in a rush, before I change my mind, and it must be the quiet of the night that emboldens me to think and speak my mind. Otherwise I might not have ever opened my mouth. I wouldn’t have found the courage to slip my hand underneath his khakis and underwear. I do jerk off; cocks aren’t exactly unfamiliar to me, but I grip Oliver in my hand, feeling his already waking erection as a thing strange all its own. But soon enough, I know it will become intimately familiar to me. 

“Besides.” I adjust myself, pressing my free hand down against Oliver’s chest so that he’s comfortable too. After I’m sure, I move and straddle his hips. “The bed won’t creak as much.” 

“You think of everything,” Oliver laughs, and then the laugh gives way to a quiet moan, muffled more as he covers his own mouth. “Oh, _fuck_.” 

I jerk him slowly, rocking my hips in time, but since it’s my bed and I know it intimately, nothing creaks, and we’re very quiet. I watch Oliver, greedy for more of him as distilled in the quickening pulse against my skin. Then I lean down to lick his knuckles until he parts his fingers and we kiss. That way, any sound Oliver makes, he can make as an honest person, and I’d have something to keep. 

We work together towards a crescendo, mindful of the night time standing still around us. When Oliver comes, he barely makes any sound, but his body shakes and I hold on to him, squeezing out every last drop of his semen. 

There is a dark guilty stain that covers the crotch of his khaki shorts. I’m painfully hard myself and I want to rub my cock in his sticky mess, but I know I can’t. And maybe the honest part of me doesn’t want to, either. When Oliver cranes his head to inspect the damage, I deter him with a kiss. 

I’m mostly successful, I think. 

“I have a trick for sneaking that sort of thing in the wash,” I say. “We can do that first thing in the morning. Promise.” 

“You do think of everything,” Oliver presses his thumb against my mouth. 

“I do,” I say. I settle in next to him and he doesn’t protest. “Sometimes I think too much, Oliver, do you know what I mean?” 

“Yeah.” Oliver nods, but his eyes are closed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

**Author's Note:**

> **I've signed up for Fandom for Australia! My creator page is [here](https://ffoz-offerings.livejournal.com/37381.html) if you're interested! It's for a good cause, raising money to help fight the bushfires. Bidding starts on 23 February 2020 and ends 29 February 2020. Check me out if you're so inclined, thanks!**


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